I think it can be justified since in the first picture Dante in like in his 20's, kinda young looking fella. While in the 2nd picture he is a more experienced demon killer. Plus, 2 completely different games in my point of view. I like the Devil May Cry franchise a lot and I can honestly say that for me DMC was better than Devil May Cry 4.

seriously?!
SERIOUSLY!!?!?
HOW CAN PEOPLE SAY THIS!?!?
You can't compare devil may cry to devil may cry.
You can't compare elder scrolls morrowind to any other games of the series.
Hell i have even heard people say you can't compare vanilla wow to pandaria wow!?
YOU COMPARE GAMES TO CERTAIN GAMES THAT MATCH ITS GENRE! You strive as a community to criticize games for its shortcomings so that we can tell the developers what they can do to improve the games and make them better. And yet people say you can't compare a game to its sequels or prequels!!! Get off your fandom faggotry dildo and accept that sometimes games make good strides forward. and sometimes games just serve us a huge pile of ****!

Actually Dante is the youngest he's ever been in DMC3, and he gets 5 scythes through: His torso, his wrists and his legs and he just breaks the blades off the handles, and uses them as weapons (Still in his body)

how boring is that though? a character who, from the start, was basically invincible and felt nothing, how does that progress at all? how about a character who can feel pain almost as much as a human, and has to go through about 20 times as much of it, a character who develops immunity through sheer exposure to pain

Because he wasn't a human, he never suffered PAIN (Bar a few times when it was inflicted by demons)
Throughout DMC3, he had to come to terms with his heritage, not his weakness
Best examples being when he has to fight his "shadow", 'I know why you're here...You've got some questions to ask me..Too bad. I already answered them myself..I know what I have to do"
And while tacky, his last conversation with his brother
"Within each of us flows his blood..More importantly, his soul...And now, my soul is saying it wants to stop you." "Unfortunately our souls are at odds brother. I need more power." "..And we're supposed to be twins.."
(Bear in mind it was written by capcom)

but those are 2 of about 3 instances where there's any kind of emotion in the old DMC games, I dunno if you've read the novels but Dante was a **** load weaker in that as well. Personally I think it's brilliant to know the full potential Dante has, and to see him getting as strong as he does in DmC, knowing that there's so so much more development available, rather than start him invincible and just alter the amount of **** he says as he gets older, nom'sen?

In the novels/anime Dante needs to be weaker
You couldn't expect Kratos to be weak, it'd ruin the game
And you can't really count DMC2 because that's terrible (Which is the one DmC rips off the most) DMC1 has a few, and DMC4 only had a couple because you play Nero half the game

hahah nobody counts DMC2, loved the combat for about 2 levels and then realised that's literally all there is to it...
ah but Kratos isn't weak, he's human but he's so powerful because he earned it, much like I want the new Dante to do, previous Dante was just ****** overpowered to ****, new Dante is cocky, and I feel like anything he fights could annihilate the guy. On other DMC games I get annoyed when I die cos he's OP as **** in cut scenes
but that's another thing, I loved Nero cos of how weak he was when stood next to Dante, but god ****** dammit he tried so hard